Chapter Twenty-six
They rode slunk down in the Jeep like teenagers ashamed to be spotted with a parent, much to Karen’s continued amusement. “Brenda’s gonna love this.”
“Still together?” Maji asked from the space between the front passenger seat and the console, bracing herself against the bumps in the springy suspension. A blooming headache reminded her that she should have asked Karen for an ice pack, earlier. But she’d been preoccupied.
“Don’t sound so surprised.”
“No, of course. But, you know. How is she?”
“Four years clean and sober,” Karen answered with pride.
“Wow.”
“Damn straight, wow. Doubting Thomas.”
“I was pulling for her,” Maji objected. “Well, say hi, okay?”
“Say hi yourself—you two come for dinner sometime, and we’ll catch up,” Karen suggested. “You can go out in public with her, can’t you?”
“Not after today,” Rose piped up, eliciting a true guffaw from their driver. Maji didn’t laugh.
Without asking, Karen pointed the Jeep toward Hannah’s house, as Maji knew she would. “Coast is clear,” she announced, pulling up to the curb.
As instructed, Rose slipped out of the Jeep and rabbited for the back porch. Hannah caught her in a hug, and together they watched Karen and Maji muscle the bike out of the back of the Jeep, into the garage. As Maji gave her signature thanks and good-bye nod, Karen took hold of her wrist and spoke earnestly. Maji said something curt but polite and was released.
When Maji reached the back porch, Hannah asked, “What did Karen say?”
“Just that I’m too old to be messing around with married women,” Maji answered, then looked Rose in the eye. “Which I never did. Knowingly.”
Rose just turned and walked into the kitchen, and sat at the table there. Maji walked past her, talking to herself. No—talking on the comm again. “Package secured. Yours?” She listened a few seconds. “Will extract after debrief. Out.” She opened the cabinet over the sink, then turned to Rose. “Water?”
“Please,” Rose said.
Maji handed her a glass and washed four pills down with half of her own.
“Injuries?” Hannah asked.
“Just a bump.” She peeled off her bike jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. “Let’s do the talk. I need a shower.”
“Sit,” Hannah commanded. She fished in a drawer and pulled out a small flashlight. Pulling a chair to face Maji, she asked, “Any bumps besides the goose egg on your forehead?”
“My fault,” Rose said.
“Nonsense,” Hannah replied, while shining the light in each of Maji’s eyes and closely watching the reaction.
“No, really,” Rose tried again. She couldn’t seem to put more words together. Had she hit her head, too?
“Really, she did great,” Maji said. Then she described the two men, how they were dressed, how they behaved. “Might have been posing as Feds,” she added. “Didn’t wait to find out.”
“What if they were?” Rose asked. “Feds, for real.”
Maji shook her head, winced, and accepted an icepack from Hannah. “They would have identified themselves. Loudly, and with badges. These guys wanted to corral us before engaging.”
Rose drank down the rest of her glass. “Good. I’m glad I didn’t kick a federal agent.”
“She got the knee, after a nice roll-under, and before driving like a pro,” Maji told Hannah.
Hannah raised one brow. “And then?”
“Sirens picked us up on the parkway. I pulled over at County Road, and let two guys in state trooper uniforms approach.”
“They really weren’t cops?” Rose asked.
“This level of planning suggests they’ve been in the area, waiting for an opportunity,” Hannah noted.
Rose looked into her empty glass. “Hungry,” she said.
“Of course.” Hannah stood and left them sitting, Rose feeling too dull to move and Maji with her head reclining on her chair back, and her feet on a second chair. Hannah set plates and silver before them, and brought Shabbos leftovers to the table. “Eat. It helps.”
Rose started unwrapping the cucumber salad, the broiled salmon, and the cold potatoes. “Bubbles?”
Hannah smiled at her, and heaped large portions onto Maji’s plate. “She and Rey came for supper, yes.”
“Missed him again,” Rose said and took a bite of salmon. Almost right away, her head felt clearer. She ate slowly, watching Maji clear her plate with uncharacteristic speed. Food must be a cure she was used to. Rose smiled for the first time since before they’d spotted the men in suits. It felt so long ago. “May I go lie down?”
“Take a bunk upstairs, middle bedroom,” Hannah replied. “And you may take that shower now,” she added, to Maji.
Maji stood. “C’mon. I’ll give you the five-cent tour of the upstairs.”
Rose woke and looked around, surprised the room was still bright. Surely she’d slept all day. No, the clock on the desk said 1:25. She rolled off the bottom bunk—Bubbles’s bunk, according to Maji—and took a few minutes to search for signs of the two when they had shared the room, years ago. A yield sign on the back of the door suggested they had pillaged street signs as teens, like some of her high school friends had. An old poster from a 1995 Ani DiFranco concert tour hung on the wall. Rose leaned in close and read the inscription: Missed you!—A. She made a note to ask about that.
On the bookcase, a stack of textbooks looked as if they’d been pulled off the shelf and returned in a stack rather than a row. Rose remembered Hannah’s promise to remove any identifiers from the dojo, and Bubbles’s concern over the possibility of Iris staying in their room. But if Iris saw books on Farsi, Arabic, and general linguistics, what could she glean from that? Rose picked up the text on top and opened the front flap. Maji’s real name, with a phone number and Columbia University Department of Linguistics were written inside, in neat print. The interior pages had highlighting, turned down pages, and not-so-neat notes in the margins. Definitely an item to pack away during Iris’s visit.
She set the book aside and reached for the manila folder under it.
“If you can’t sleep, that one will put you right out.”
Rose turned and was relieved to see Maji smiling in the doorway. “Sorry. Hannah put these away to protect you from snoopers, didn’t she?”
“You’re allowed. Go ahead, open it.”
Rose flipped the folder open, and read the title of what was clearly Maji’s master’s thesis. Toward a Concordance Methodology for Farsi, Arabic, and Hebrew in the American Diaspora. She skimmed down the page and understood very little. Not because it was written poorly—it read like a master’s thesis should—but because the lingo was entirely out of her wheelhouse. Rose felt like she was witnessing another transformation of Maji, as believable as the Ri persona, but more relatable to her own academic world. “Did you really start at Columbia at only seventeen?”
Maji looked surprisingly shy at the question. “No, I was a sophomore by then. And dumb enough to think that an ID would convince Karen she could go to a club with me.”
Rose laughed. “Didn’t work?”
“She met me, but it didn’t go like I’d hoped. I got drunk and stupid. Wound up in the ER. Papi had to come bring me home, and he blew my cover.”
“And she’s called you Jailbait ever since?”
“Yep. Can’t blame her. She fought to become one of the first women in the New York City fire department. If anyone had found out she dated a juvenile, well. I’m lucky she still talks to me at all.”
Rose offered her the gentlest smile she could. “People seem inclined to forgive you for all sorts of things.”
“More than they should.” Maji looked past Rose, her eyes sweeping the room and alighting on an unopened package on the desk. “What’s that?”
“Don’t know.” Rose was glad she could answer that honestly, after snooping so boldly. She had seen it was addressed to M. Rios, c/o Paragon Security at an address in Madrid, and had left it alone. “Here.” She handed it to Maji and watched her face, looking for answers to a question Iris had raised earlier in the week. She’d implied that Hannah had trained Maji, and perhaps others, to gain employees suitable for her private security business. Maji’s face didn’t betray anything as she ripped the packet open. A slow smile when she pulled out a music CD and read the back made Rose twice as curious.
“Fan mail?”
Maji’s eyes flitted back and forth, her smile not entirely wiped away. “Just a gift from a friend.” She left the package, but held on to the CD. “Meet me downstairs in five.”
And then she was gone. Rose went down the hall to find the bathroom, wondering at the enigma that was Maji—soldier, scholar, juvenile delinquent, and child prodigy. Pretending to be a gangster’s moll, street-smart and tough as nails. Now that Rose knew her better, only the last seemed unlikely.
Hannah pulled the runabout up to the swim platform twenty yards out from the estate next door to the Benedettis’. From there the boathouse was just visible. She surveyed the horizon with high-powered binoculars. Maji wished they could have waited to return until after dark, but she understood it would be best if they were back in the house when the Khodorovs arrived. She looked at Rose, also lying in the belly of the boat, and gave her a small smile. Rose flashed a grin back, her spirit of adventure apparently intact again.
“All right,” Hannah said both for their benefit and for the guys covering them from inside the boathouse. “On our way.”
In less than a minute, the boat bumped up against the end of the near dock protruding slightly from the edge of the boathouse. Dev gave them a quick hand out, and they scrambled for the rear of the building, in the depths of shadow. “Welcome home,” he said.
Then he stood with binoculars up, scanning the Sound while Tom climbed down from the rafters, his rifle over his back.
“Home sweet home,” Rose said dryly. So maybe it wasn’t such a grand adventure for her, after all. The sight of guns always seemed to erase whatever fun she found in the sneaking around. Maji couldn’t blame her.
“We’re late to meet the caterer,” Tom said, powering by them on his short, sturdy legs.
“Oh God, today?” Rose asked.
“Not you, just us,” Maji answered.
“Oh, okay.” Rose sounded both relieved and disappointed. “Which one did Angelo pick?”
“Cuba Libre.”
“Good! Music, cleaning, and the best food of the lot.”
Also, Maji thought, the FBI’s way into the house. Time to start seeing Special Agent Martinez in action.
“Smooth trip home?” Angelo asked as Maji and the guys reached the basement.
“As silk. Did Frank make it to the market?”
“Yeah. Got a trunk load of produce, and leads on the guys who tagged you.”
“I could have had a team on-site within an hour, if you’d called me,” Rey said.
“Sorry,” Angelo offered, though he wasn’t. The last thing he needed was a bunch of Feds poking around, if Sirko’s operatives had left anyone on watch to notice them.
“Goldberg,” Dev said to Rey, not waiting to be introduced.
Rey took his hand, shook, and moved on to Tom. “You’re Taylor?”
“Yes, sir. And what are we calling you?”
“Raul Machado. Here’s my card. Direct line’s on the back. I’ll answer as Cuba Libre Catering, but it’s secure. Call the number on the front only if you want food delivered.”
“Got it,” Angelo confirmed for them. “Oh, and this is Sergeant Rios. She goes by Ri.”
“Hey,” Maji said, not offering her hand. She did, however, take a card. Neither of them indicated that they had met before. The guys already knew now that Ri and Hannah were connected. A family tie to their FBI liaison was more than they needed to worry about.
They had run through almost all the initial logistics for the Fourth when Frank’s voice said, via their comms, “Khodorov just pulled up. Here, not at the Big House.”
“Time to see you out,” Angelo said to Rey, as the team hit the stairs.
Angelo stepped out onto the front landing behind Rey, just in time to look surprised and give a friendly wave to Sander. He used his outside voice to send Rey off. “Email me your final quote tomorrow, Raul. I’ll send a guy by with the deposit Monday.”
“Excelente,” Rey said, shaking his hand. He climbed into the Cuba Libre minivan with barely a glance at the notorious Russians.
“Well,” Sander said, using his indoor voice as his father and their driver climbed out of the car, “I see why you picked that one.”
“Hey, they had the best food, okay? All the girls agreed.”
“And they all saw him, too, right?”
“Yeah, but Rose ain’t swayed by any factors other than food.”
“She’s gay?”
“Queer as a three-dollar bill. I never mentioned that?”
“No. How’s that for your straight-acting girlfriend?”
“Like dieting in a candy store,” Angelo said.